by CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (of Vanity Fair Magazine)

The Bush Administration has been saying in public for several months
that it does not desire an independent inquiry into the
gross "failures of intelligence" that left U.S. society defenseless
14 months ago. By announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing
the inquiry that it did not want, the President has now made the same
point in a different way. But the cynicism of the decision and the
gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it
represents has to be analyzed to be believed.

1) We already know quite a lot, thanks all the same, about who was
behind the attacks. Most notable in incubating al-Qaida were the
rotten client-state regimes of the Saudi Arabian oligarchy and the
Pakistani military and police elite. Henry Kissinger is now, and
always has been, an errand boy and apologist for such regimes.

2) When in office, Henry Kissinger organized massive deceptions of
Congress and public opinion. The most notorious case concerned
the "secret bombing" of Cambodia and Laos, and the unleashing of
unconstitutional methods by Nixon and Kissinger to repress dissent
from this illegal and atrocious policy. But Sen. Frank Church's
commission of inquiry into the abuses of U.S. intelligence, which
focused on illegal assassinations and the subversion of democratic
governments overseas, was given incomplete and misleading information
by Kissinger, especially on the matter of Chile. Rep. Otis Pike's
parallel inquiry in the House (which brought to light Kissinger's
personal role in the not-insignificant matter of the betrayal of the
Iraqi Kurds, among other offenses) was thwarted by Kissinger at every
turn, and its eventual findings were classified. In other words, the
new "commission" will be chaired by a man with a long, proven record
of concealing evidence and of lying to Congress, the press, and the
public.

3) In his second career as an obfuscator and a falsifier, Kissinger
appropriated the records of his time at the State Department and took
them on a truck to the Rockefeller family estate in New York. He has
since been successfully sued for the return of much of this public
property, but meanwhile he produced, for profit, three volumes of
memoirs that purported to give a full account of his tenure. In
several crucial instances, such as his rendering of U.S. diplomacy
with China over Vietnam, with apartheid South Africa over Angola, and
with Indonesia over the invasion of East Timor (to cite only some of
the most conspicuous), declassified documents have since shown him to
be a bald-faced liar. Does he deserve a third try at presenting a
truthful record, after being caught twice as a fabricator? And on
such a grave matter as this?

4) Kissinger's "consulting" firm, Kissinger Associates, is a
privately held concern that does not publish a client list and that
compels its clients to sign confidentiality agreements. Nonetheless,
it has been established that Kissinger's business dealings with, say,
the Chinese Communist leadership have closely matched his public
pronouncements on such things as the massacre of Chinese students.
Given the strong ties between himself, his partners Lawrence
Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the oil oligarchies of the Gulf,
it must be time for at least a full disclosure of his interests in
the region. This thought does not seem to have occurred to the
president or to the other friends of Prince Bandar and Prince
Bandar's wife, who helped in the evacuation of the Bin Laden family
from American soil, without an interrogation, in the week after Sept.
11.

5) On Memorial Day 2001, Kissinger was visited by the police in the
Ritz Hotel in Paris and handed a warrant, issued by Judge Roger
LeLoire, requesting his testimony in the matter of disappeared French
citizens in Pinochet's Chile. Kissinger chose to leave town rather
than appear at the Palais de Justice as requested. He has since been
summoned as a witness by senior magistrates in Chile and Argentina
who are investigating the international terrorist network that went
under the name "Operation Condor" and that conducted assassinations,
kidnappings, and bombings in several countries. The most spectacular
such incident occurred in rush-hour traffic in downtown Washington,
D.C., in September 1976, killing a senior Chilean dissident and his
American companion. Until recently, this was the worst incident of
externally sponsored criminal violence conducted on American soil.
The order for the attack was given by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who has
been vigorously defended from prosecution by Henry Kissinger.

Moreover, on Sept. 10, 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington,
D.C., federal court, charging Kissinger with murder. The suit,
brought by the survivors of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile, asserts
that Kissinger gave the order for the elimination of this
constitutional officer of a democratic country because he refused to
endorse plans for a military coup. Every single document in the
prosecution case is a U.S.-government declassified paper. And the
target of this devastating lawsuit is being invited to review the
shortcomings of the "intelligence community"?

In late 2001, the Brazilian government canceled an invitation for
Kissinger to speak in Sao Paulo because it could no longer guarantee
his immunity. Earlier this year, a London court agreed to hear an
application for Kissinger's imprisonment on war crimes charges while
he was briefly in the United Kingdom. It is known that there are many
countries to which he cannot travel at all, and it is also known that
he takes legal advice before traveling anywhere. Does the Bush
administration feel proud of appointing a man who is wanted in so
many places, and wanted furthermore for his association with
terrorism and crimes against humanity? Or does it hope to limit the
scope of the inquiry to those areas where Kissinger has clients?

There is a tendency, some of it paranoid and disreputable, for the
citizens of other countries and cultures to regard President
Bush's "war on terror" as opportunist and even as contrived. I myself
don't take any stock in such propaganda. But can Congress and the
media be expected to swallow the appointment of a proven coverup
artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is
wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offenses? The shame of
this, and the open contempt for the families of our victims, ought to
be the cause of a storm of protest.

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author
of The Trial of Henry Kissinger, newly issued in paperback.
Photograph by Mike Theiler/Reuters.]
 

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